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Bar Ha?^bor

American

Summer

Resorts

The North Shore. By Robert
Grant.
With Illustrations by W, T. Smed-
LEY.

Newport. By W. C. Brovvnell.
With Illustrations by W. S. Van-
DERBiLT Allen.

Bar Harbor. By F. Marion Craw-
ford.
With Illustrations by C. S. Rein-
hart.

Lenox. By George A. Hibbard.

With Illustrations by W. S. Van-
derbilt Allen.

■5^„ "^ Each i2mo. Cloth. Price, 75 cents

i'\ A i

10-

^^^^'

Canoeing

V

AMERICAN SUMMER RESORTS

BJR HARBOR

BT

F. MARION CRAWFORD

ILLUSTRATED BT

C. S. REINHART

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEJV YORK MDCCCA'Cri

Cofy right, /Sg4, iSgd, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

\ ^>

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIOXS

Page

Canoeing ....

Frontispiece

The Landing Stage

7

On the Corniche Road

• 13

A Yachting Party .

. /p

Chmhing Newport Alountain

• ^7

A Buckhoard Party

• 35

Anemone Cave

• 43

Cottage Life — A Luncheon Party

• 47

Eagle Lake ....

• jf

''Landed'' ....

• 37

iv.je79890

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THE first impression made by Bar
Harbor at the height of its season
upon the mind of one fresh from a more
staid and crystaUized civihzation is that it
is passing through a period of transition,
in which there is some of the awkward-
ness which we associate with rapid growth,
and something also of the youthful fresh-

B^r ness which gives that very awkwardness
a charm. The name of Mount Desert
suggests, perhaps, a grim and forbidding
chfF, frowning upon the pale waves of a
melancholy ocean. Instead, the traveller
who crosses the bay in the level light of an
August afternoon looks upon the soft,
rolling outline of wooded hills, on the
highest of which a little hotel breaks the
sky-line, upon a shore along which villas
and cottages stretch on either side of a
toy wooden village, which looks as though
it were to be put away in a box at night,
and upon the surrounding sea, an almost
land-locked inlet, in which other islands,
like satellites of Mount Desert, are scat-
tered here and there.

As the little steamer draws up to her
moorings the groups of people waiting
on the pier stand out distinctly, and the
usual types detach themselves one by one.
The clusters of hotel-runners and express-
men are lounging listlessly until they shall
be roused to clamorous activity by the
landing of the first passenger ; in knots

aiul j^airs, those sercncK" idle people of all ^^^
ages, who, in all places and seasons, seem
to find an ev^er-new amusement in watch-
ing the arrival of trains or boats, are as
deeply interested as usual ; the inevitable
big and solemn dog, of nondescript breed
and eclectic affections, is stalking about
with an air of responsibility.

And yet the little crowd is not quite
like other gatherings on other piers. Girls
in smart cotton trocks are sitting in shin-
ing Httle village carts, with grooms at
their horses' sleek heads, wedged in be-
tween empty buck-boards that look like
paralyzed centipedes, the drivers of which
wear clothes ranging from the livery of
the large stables to the weather-bleached
coat of the " native" from Cherryfield or
Ellsworth, who has brought over his horse
to take his share of the " rusticator's "
ready money during the short season.
There are no hotel omnibuses, no covered
traps of any kind, as becomes a holiday
place where winter and roui^h weather are
enemies not meant to be reckoned with ;

Harb

B'if everybody seems either to know every-
one else, or not to care if he does not, and
there is an air of cheerful informality about
the whole scene which immediately makes
one feel welcome and at home.

In order not to be behind every self-
respecting town throughout the Western
world Bar Harbor has a Main Street,
which plunges violently down a steep place
toward the pier, and which is beautified
for a short distance by a mushroom growth
of tents and shanties, the summer home
of the almond-eyed laundryman, the itin-
erant photographer with a specialty of
tintypes, and the seller of weary-looking
fruit, of sandwiches that have seen better
days, and temperance drinks of gorgeous
hues. Plymouth Rock also vaunts its
" pants," and young ladies are recom-
mended to grow up with Castoria.

Then come the more necessary shops —
the tinsmith's, at whose door a large bull-
terrier benevolently grins all day ; the
tailor's, where one may study the fashions
of New York filtered through Bangor ;

4

the china shop, where bright-colored himp-
shades spread themselves like great butter-
flies in the window, and the establishment
of Mr. Bee, the locally famous and indis-
pensable provider of summer literature,
and of appropriate alleviations for the
same, in the shape of caramels, cigarettes,
and chewing-gum. Directly opposite
stands a huge hotel, apparently closed or
almost deserted, but evidently built in the
years when the gnawing tooth of the na-
tional jig-saw grievously tormented all man-
ner of wood-work, a melancholy relic of an
earlier time when, as " Rodick's," it was
almost another name for Bar Harbor itself.
No lover of Bar Harbor has been found
bold enough to say that Main Street is
pretty ; and yet, between ten and twelve
o'clock on a summer's morning, it has
a character, if not a beauty, of its own.
Alongside of the "board walk," which takes
the place of a pavement, the buckboards
are drawn up, waiting to be hired ; in some
of them, often drawn by four horses, are
parties of people, consisting; usually ot more

Bur
Hjrbo

Harbor

Ba'- women than men, as is becoming in New
England, already starting upon one of the
longer expeditions, and only stopping to
collect a stray member or to lay in a stock
of fruit and sugar-plumbs. Farmers' carts,
with closed hoods like Shaker sunbonnets,
are on their rounds from one cottage to
another, meandering through the crowd,
and driven with exasperating calmness by
people who sit far back in their little tun-
nels, and cannot possibly see on either side
of them to get out of anyone else's way.
Then there are all sorts of light private
traps, usually driven by women or girls
bound on household errands or visits, and
psychologically unbalanced between their
desire to speak to the friends who meet
them on foot, and their anxiety lest they
should be forced to recognize the particu-
lar acquaintance on whom they are just
going to call.

Along the board walk there is a row of

little shops, some of them scarcely larger

than booths, the proprietors of which

perch like birds of passage, pluming them-

6

The

Landing

Stage

-I' ~'^. _

'C.'

m.

selves in the sunshine of the brief season, J^^'
and taking flight again before the autumn
gales. In one window a lot of Turkish
finery looks curiously exotic, especially
the little slippers, gay with tassels and
embroidery, turning up their pointed toes
as if scorning the stouter footgear which
tramps along outside. Another shop is
bright with the crude colors of Spanish
scarfs and pottery ; in another, Japanese
wares manage to keep their faint smell of
the East in spite of the salt northern air,
and farther on you may wonder at the
misplaced ingenuity of Florida shell jew-
elry, and be fascinated by the rakish leer
of the varnished alligator.

By one of the contrasts which make
Bar Harbor peculiarly attractive, next
door to these cosmopolitan shops there
still thrives one of the indigenous general
stores, where salt fish are sold, and house-
hold furniture and crockery, and the candy
peculiar to New England stores and New
York peanut stands, which keeps through
all vicissitudes a vague odor of sawdust,
9

Harbor

Harbor

Bar and where you may also buy, as was once
advertised by the ingenuous dealer, "baby
carriages, butter, and paint."

Should you wish to give a message to a
friend without the trouble of writing a
note, the chances are more than even that
you will find him or her any morning on
the board-walk, or in the neighborhood of
the post-office, for as there is no delivery
at Bar Harbor, and as the mails are often
delayed, there is ample opportunity to
search for an acquaintance in the waiting
crowd. Here also congregate the grooms
in undress livery, with leather mail-bags
slung under one arm, who have ridden in
from the outlying cottages, and who walk
their horses up and down, or exchange
stable notes with their acquaintances ; sail-
ors from private yachts, usually big, fair
Scandinavians ; mail orderlies from any
men-of-war which may happen to be in
port ; boys and girls who do not find the
waiting long, and all that mysterious tribe
of people who look as if they could not
possibly receive a dozen letters a year, and

lO

yet who arc always assiduously looking
out for them. As usual, the post-office is
a loadstone for all the dogs in the village,
and as there are many strangers among
them, of all breeds and ages and tempers,
walking round and round one another with
stiff legs and bristling backs, unregenerate
man is kept in tremulous expectation of a
dog-fight as free as any in Stamboul. But
somehow the fight rarely comes off, though
the resident canine population has become
fearfully and wonderfully mixed, through
the outsiders who have loved and ridden
away. One nondescript, especially, is not
soon forgotten, a nightmare cross of a
creature in which the curly locks and
feathery tail of the spaniel are violently
modified by the characteristic pointed
breastbone and bandy legs of a dachs-
hund.

Wandering through the streets of the
little village one is struck again and again
by the sharp contrast between what may
be called the natural life of the place and
the artificial condition which fashion has

Bar
Harhc

B^"- imposed upon it. In some of the streets
almost every house is evidently meant to
be rented, the owners usually retiring to
restricted quarters at the back, where they
stow themselves away and hang themselves
up on pegs until they may come into their
own again. Here and there a native cot-
tage has been bought and altered by a
summer resident, and over the whole there
is the peculiarly smug expression of a
quarter which is accustomed to put its best
foot foremost for a few months of the
year. But in the back lanes and side-
streets there are still the conditions of the
small New England community, in which
land is poor and work is slack during the
long winter, so that although there is no
abject poverty in the sense in which it is
known to cities, there is also little time or
inclination for the mere prettiness of life.

An element of the picturesque is sup-
plied by an Indian camp, which used for
years to be pitched in a marshy field
known as Squaw Hollow ; but with the
advent of a Village Improvement Society

On the

Corniche

Road

>hM-^

certain ncwfanu^lcd and disturhinir ideas as Bar

, . • 1-11 • Ucirhor

to sanitary conditions obtained a nearinir,
and the Indians were banished to a back
road out of the way of sensitive eyes and
noses. Thev claim to be of the Passama-
quoddy tribe, speak their own language,
and follow the peaceful trades of basket-
weaving and moccasin-making, and the
building of birch-bark canoes. Their lit-
tle dwellings — some of them tents, some
of them shanties covered with tar-paper
and strips of bark — are scattered about,
and in the shadow of one of them sits a
lady of enormous girth, who calls herself
their queen, and who wears, perhaps as a
badge of sovereignty, a huge fur cap even
in the hottest weather. She is not less
industrious than other "regular royal"
queens, for she sells baskets and tells for-
tunes even more flattering than the fabled
tale of Hope. Some of the young men
are fine, swarthv, taciturn creatures, who
look as though thev knew how to put a
knife to other uses than whittling the
frame of a canoe ; but one does not feel
15

Ba^ tempted to rush upon Fate for the sake
of any of the dumpy and greasy-looking
damsels who will soon become like their
even dumpier and greasier mothers.

The whole encampment is pungent with
the acrid smoke of green wood, and many
children — round, good-natured balls of fat
in all shades of yellow and brown — roll
about in close friendship with queer little
dogs, in which the absence of breed pro-
duces a family likeness. It is curious to
see in the characteristic work of these peo-
ple the survival of the instinctive taste of
semi-savage races, and the total lack of it in
everything else. The designs cut on the
bark of their canoes, the cunningly blended
colors in their basket-work, are thoroughly
good in their way ; but contact with a
higher civilization seems to have affected
them as it has the Japanese, turning their
attention chiefly to making napkin-rings
and collar-boxes, and to a hideous delight
in tawdry finery, which is fondly, though
distantly, modelled on current American
fashions.

i6

Bar Harbor drinks the cup of summer Ba

standing. In mid-April the snow may lie
six feet deep, and before the end of Octo-
ber long icicles are often hanging on the
north side of the rocks, while even in
August the northern lights shoot up their
quivering, spectral spears from the hori-
zon to the zenith. Some fierce days of
heat there are in July, but on the whole
the temperature is decidedly arctic, especi-
ally to one accustomed to a less rigorous
climate. In New York we are used to
having the kindly fruits of the earth
brought to us long before their natural
season, and it sounds strangely to be told
at Bar Harbor that the first garden straw-
berries may be looked for about the fourth
of July, and that June lilies will bloom
early in August; but such trifles only give
one a feeling of chasing the summer, as
climate-fanciers follow the spring, and are
certainly not to be reckoned as grievances.
The people who have a certain very
slight right to complain are the artists,
who, haviner heard of the beauties of

Harbor

17

B'^r Mount. Desert, come prepared to carry
away at least a reminder of them on can-
vas or paper. They find that they have
fallen upon a spot almost entirely deficient
in what painters term " atmosphere," and
of which the characteristic effects almost
defy reproduction. In what is known as
a " real Bar Harbor day" the air is so thin
and clear that there seem to be no distant
effects, and objects lose their relative val-
ues. The sea is of a darker blue than the
sky, and the rocks are very red or very
gray, and the birches are of a brighter
green than the firs, which stand out against
the sky with edges as sharp as those of the
tightly curled trees on wooden stands in
the toy Swiss farm-yards dear to our youth.
But that is all. Even the clouds seem to
abjure mystery and take definite outlines ;
the water is spangled with shining points
where the light breeze ruffles it, and one
can see every patch on the sail of the old
fishing-schooner making her leisurely way
to her anchorage. Any attempt at a faith-
ful rendering of such dry brilliancy is apt

i8

t

to have a fatal likeness to a chromo-litho- B'"'
graph, and the artist usually ends by leav-
ing his paint-box at home, and giving
himself up to enjoyment of the keen air
that tingles through his veins like wine.

The truthful chronicler is forced to ad-
mit that the climate of Bar Harbor has
two drawbacks — high wind and fog, one
usually following the other. Out of a clear
sky, without a cloud, while the sun grins
away derisively overhead, a southwest gale
will often blow a whole day, filling the vil-
lage streets with stinging dust and the
whirling disks of vagrant hats, and making
the little fleet of catboats and launches in
the harbor duck and strain at their moor-
ings ; turning venturesome girls who try
to walk into struggling pillars of strangely
twisted drapery, and even in the heart of
the warm woods tearing at the crowded
trees so that they sigh and creek as they
rub their weary old limbs against one an-
other. The second day is gray and cloudy,
on the third it rains, but sdll the wind
blows, a nervous wind that makes one

^ar long to pick a quarrel with one's best
friend. And then the wind drops as sud-
denly as it rose, and the next day all dis-
comfort, past and to come, is forgotten for
awhile in sheer delight of beauty. For the
air is still, and the sun shines gently on a
dull green sea over which little shivers run
now and then, and far in the offing there
is the gray line of a fog-bank. Slowly it
comes in with the southeast wind, stealing
along the surface of the water, now closing
softly round an island, then rising from it
like a wreath of smoke, here piled into a
fleecy mass, there turned to silver and scat-
tered by a sunbeam, but coming on and
on, and creeping up and up, until the trees
on the Porcupines have their feet in the
clouds like Wagnerian heroes ; and pres-
ently they also are hidden, and the whole
harbor is swathed in a soft cloud, from the
depths of which come now and then the
muffled, anxious whistles of the little steam-
ers which ply about the bay — the Silver
Star, from Winter Harbor; the Cimbria,
from Bangor ; and louder and deeper, the

hoarse note of the Sappho as she feels ^'^
her way across with passengers troni the
ferry.

When the oldest hihabitant is asked
how lonn a foo^ may last he will shake his
head, shift his quid, and decHne to commit
himself. There is a legend of a young
man who came in on a yacht some years
ago, duly prepared to enjoy himself and
admire the scenery. His skipper groped
his way to an anchorage in a mist so dense
that he could not see fifty feet ahead or
astern ; the luckless young man went about
for nine mortal days, swathed in a soft,
smothering blanket ; on the tenth day he
sailed away, still in a thick fog, and swear-
In mighty oaths. Even when the fog lies
over the bay the air may be quite clear in-
land, and after a drive among the hills it is
a curious sensation to come back to the
shore. In the wooded uplands all is
sunny and cheerful, but when the village
is reached a cold breath is stealing through
it as though the door of an ice-house had
been left open, and on turning down a

^^'' side-street toward the sea a gray wall of
mist blots out trees and shore alike.

To anyone not familiar with it, catboat
sailing in a thick fog does not suggest itself
as an amusement. It has a strong attrac-
tion of its own, however, for the breeze is
usually steady, and the entire obliteration
of the familiar landmarks gives an element
of uncertainty and adventure. The course
must be steered by the compass, and it is
necessary to have accurate notes of the
local bearings. If the harbor is at all
crowded the little boat feels her way out
slowly, close-hauled, as carefully as though
she were alive ; but once in the freer water
the sheet is started, and she slips forward
into infinite mystery. Every sense is
strained to take the place of sight, which
is baffled and almost useless in the thickly
pressing veil that now and then grows
thinner for a moment, only to close in
again more densely. The sharp lapping of
the water against the sides of the boat, the
wash of the rising tide upon some island,
the shrill scream of a gull overhead, the
24

whistle of a launch astern in the harbor — B'"'
all these make to themselves echoes, and
by and by the far-off beat of a side-wheel
steamer throbs with a great palpitation in
the stillness. Boats which ply for profit
or sail for pleasure are apt to make noise
enough in a fog ; but the fishermen giv^e
themselves less trouble, and slipping along,
ghost-like, one mav be suddenly aware of
a larger and darker phantom ahead, to
which it is wise to give a respectfully wide
birth, without insisting too much upon the
privileges of the starboard tack and the
possible right of way, when the water is
over-cold for much swimming. There
does not seem to be any particular reason
for ever turning back, when one is not
bound for any visible point, and you may
dream your dream out before you come
about and run free for the harbor again.
The fog is, it anything, thicker than when
you started, and it is no easy matter to
find your berth ; but the boat seems to
" kinder smell her way," as an old sailor
once remarked in a like case, and at last

^^'' she bumps gently against her mooring-

Harbor ■,

buoy.

The most beautiful effects of fog at Bar
Harbor are to be seen from Newport
Mountain, which is about a thousand feet
high, and is a mile or two out of the
village. At first the path leads upward
among thick woods, through which the
sunlight falls in yellow patches, and where
the squirrels chatter angrily from the
spruce boughs. This part of the way is
very pretty, though it is apt to be warm,
and in early summer the black flies make
succulent meals on the nape of the pil-
grim's neck. A little farther on, the path
leads out over broad open stretches of
granite rock, scratched and furrowed by
a primeval glacier, with scrubby tufts of
mountain laurel growing in the stony hol-
lows, and blueberry bushes holding on for
dear life everywhere. Oddly enough, it
is the easiest thing in the world to lose the
path, although it has been considerately
marked with a line of small cairns, which,
however, are set at varying distances

a6

Climbing

Neivpon
Mountain

>4"

apart, often as far as a couple of hundred Bar
feet each from the next, and are built up
of fragments of the rock itself, so that they
are hard to distinguish in a failing light.
To miss the path means wandering aim-
lessly over the slippery rock-slopes, or
striking down the hill-side through the
almost impenetrable underbrush, with the
further penalty, especially if one happen
to have a companion of the other sex, of
being unmercifully jeered at; for to have
lost one's way on Newport Mountain is
as well-worn an excuse at Bar Harbor as
it is, in town, to say that one's cab did not
come.

Once fairly at the top, and having con-
scientiously looked at the view all round,
there is no lack of sheltered corners tor
smoke and contemplation. On the one
hand the open sea stretches out, a sheet of
gray steel, with great patches of speckled
froth and foam here and there, near the
shore, like white leopard skins, flung off
by the grim puritan rocks that will have
none of such heathenish adorning. On
29

Bar the Other hand the mainland stretches its
cruel, jagged line beyond Schoodie, and
the lighthouse on Egg Rock stands up
straight as a sentinel to guard the bay.
Two or three big men-of-war lying in the
harbor might be taken for neat models,
of themselves, and the little craft moving
about them are like water-beetles, or flit-
ting white moths. But the sea has changed
suddenly, and it shivers all over as though
the cold water could feel yet colder, and
all at once the fog-bank that has been
lying so innocently outside begins to un-
fold itself and steal forward over the sur-
face. There does not seem to be much
air above, and the trees on the Porcupines
are still free. But on the right all is very
different. Through the deep gorge or
cleft between Newport and Dry Mountain,
into which the sun has been beating all
day, the chilly fog-wind now draws hard,
and the fleecy cloud pours after it. Noth-
ing, perhaps, could be less like the stern
side of Dry Mountain than the gracious
sweep of Mount Ida, and yet, as one

3°

looks, the lines of Tennyson's " CEnone " ^''
rise to the memory :

"The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn."

But you will do well not to loiter too long
yourself, for gray cairns are ill to find in a
gray mist, and you had better gain the
woods by the time the top of Newport is
swathed in cloud as though it were a real
grown-up mountain.

Mount Desert is lucky in its proper
names of places, having been discovered as
a summer resort late enough to escape the
semi-classical namings of " Baths " and
" Mirrors " and " Bowers, " which have
sentimentalized the rocks and pools of the
White Mountains. A few French words
still linger as a reminder of the time when
Louis XIV. gave the original grant to the
Sieur de la Motte Cadillac ; but most of
them, like Hull's Cove and Town Hill,
have an honest colonial American ring,
while about Pretty Marsh Harbor there is
a certain echo of romance, and "Junk o'

Harbor

Bar Pork " and " Rum Key," two little islands,
or rather rocks, in the bay, have a very
nautical, and even piratical, suggestive-
ness.

At the first glance the island, on a map,
reminds one somewhat of the dejected
lamb which hangs by his middle in the
order of the Golden Fleece. The deep
indentation is Somes's Sound, running far
inland, with Somesville at its head, a quiet
New England village, with a white meet-
ing-house, and many other houses, most
of them also white, and standing among
gnarled apple-trees, in a gentle, dozing
tranquillity from which the place is roused
when parties drive over from Bar Harbor
to eat broiled chickens and " pop-overs " at
the local hotel, and to drive back by moon-
light — expeditions which are considered to
have sufficient local color to entitle them
to notice, without omission of the pop-
overs, in Baedeker's recent " Guide to the
United States."

In the neighborhood of Somesville the
characteristics of the native population are
32

mich more ?ioticeahle than at Bar Harbor, ^^'-

1 • 1 • 1 1 • liar bo

only eight miles away, where a watering-
place has been grafted on a fishing village.
At some time or other in his life almost
every islander seems to have followed the
sea ; the man who drives your buckboard
may have been more than once to China,
and it is extremely likely that the farmer
who brings you your green peas has been
tossed for manv a week of hours in a crazy
dory off the deadly Banks, which cost us
everv year so many lives. In nearly every
home there is some keepsake from far
away lands, some tribute from arctic or
tropic seas, and when at last an old captain
makes up his mind to stay ashore it is cer-
tain that there will be something about his
house to show his former calling — a pair of
huge whale-ribs on either side of the front
door, flowers growing in shells that have
held the murmur of the Indian Ocean, and,
instead of a cock or banner, a model of
some sort of boat perched on the barn for
a weather-vane. That a sailor-man is a
handy man is true the world over, but the

33

Bar Maine man seems to have an especial
Harbor j^j^^^,]^ ^j^|^ wood, froHi the lumber-camp
to the cabinetmaker's bench, and many a
carpenter working by the day will turn out
a well-finished sideboard or an odd piece
of artistic furniture from the roughest sort
of pencil sketch. They are good smiths,
too, and the best of their wrought-iron
recalls the breadth and freedom of the early
German and Italian work.

Society at Bar Harbor does not now
differ in any particularly salient manner
from good society anywhere else, except
that it is rather more cosmopolitan. When
the guests at a small dinner or luncheon
may have come from New York, Phila-
delphia, Boston, Washington, and Chicago,
it is impossible that the conversation should
fall into that jargon of a clique which often
makes the talk of the most centralized so-
ciety, like that of Paris or London, seem
narrow and provincial to the unfortunate
outsider.

One amusing survival of the simpler
early days is the habit of going out in the

34

A

Backboard
Party

evening in uncox'ered traps. There are a ^'"'
few private broughams, but it you are din-
ing out, and happen to reach the house as
a lady drives up, the chances are that you
will help her to alight from an open buck-
board, her smart French frock shrouded
in a long cloak, and her head more or less
muffled and protected. One or two of the
livery-stables have hacks which must have
been very old when they were brought
from Bangor, and which now hold together
almost by a miracle. A year or two ago
one of them could never be sent out with-
out two men on the box, not indeed tor
the sake of lending the turnout any ficti-
tious splendor, but because one of them
had to " mind the door," which was
broken, and could neither be shut nor
opened by any one inside. If two or
three entertainments take place on the
same night there is telephoning loud and
long for these antediluvian vehicles, as the
only other alternative is to take a sort ot
carry-all with leather side-curtains which
have a treacherous way of blowing open

Bar and dropping small waterspouts down the

Harbor i i r » i

back or one s neck.

It would be out of place for a mere
visitor to launch into predictions regarding
the social future of Bar Harbor. But one
thing at least seems certain — it can never
be in any sense a rival to Newport. The
conditions which make the summer life of
the latter more brilliant than that of any
other watering-place in the world, mark it
also as the playground of a great commer-
cial metropolis, and a large proportion of
its pleasure-seekers would not dare to be
eighteen hours distant from New York, as
they must be at Bar Harbor, until our
means of getting about shall be singularly
improved.

Then there are not the opportunities
for display of riches and for social compe-
tition which already exist at Newport.
The villas and cottages are scattered and
isolated ; there is no convenient central
point of general meeting, and the roads
are too hilly for any but light American
carriages. Some victorias manage to trun-
38

Harbor

die about, but the horses which draw them, Bar
or hold back their weight, look tar from
comfortable, and although occasional
coaches have made a brief appearance they
have not been a success, as on most of
the thickly wooded roads their passen-
gers are in danger of the fate of Absa-
lom. There is an Ocean Drive which
is fine in parts, and another road runs
above the upper bay, seeming in some
places to overhang the water, and afford-
ing a charming view of the Gouldsboro'
hills on the mainland ; but on the whole
there are few roads. There is no turf on
which to ride, and the pleasure of keeping
horses, except as a convenient means of
getting from one place to another, is lim-
ited.

But there is always the sea, and to that
one comes back with a love that is ever
new. Men who know what thev are talk-
ing, about say that Frenchman's Bay is apt
to be dangerous for small craft, on account
of the sudden squalls which come over the
hills and drop on the water like the slap of

39

Bar a tiger's paw, and it would certainly be
hard to find a place in which there can be
at the same time such an amiable diversity
of winds. It is not at all uncommon to
see two schooners within a couple of miles
of each other, both running close-hauled
or both before the wind, but on the same
tack and in opposite directions.

Another experience, familiar but always
trying, consists in starting with a light but
steady southeast breeze which feels as if it
would hold through the morning, but
which drops out suddenly and completely
within half an hour, leaving one bobbing
and broiling in a flat calm, until, without
warning, it begins to blow hard from some
point of the west. Sometimes there is
a good sailing breeze at night when the
moon is near the full, and to be on the
water then is an enchantment. The glis-
tening wake has here and here a shining
point of phosphorescence ; the familiar
lines of the islands are softened with a
silver haze ; and the whole scene has a
certain poetic quality which the positive
40

hcautv of d:ivli(j^hr cannot lend to i"t. One ^^'-
is reminded ot a woman of the world
whom one has known as always sure of
herself and almost hard, until in a moment
of weariness, of weakness, or of sadness, of
fatigue or despondency, the gentler nature
gHmmers under the mask.

Entirely apart from the question of ex-
ercise nothing perhaps affords such lasting
amusement at Bar Harbor as rowing, for it
rarely blows so hard that one cannot get
out, and one is independent of calms and
master of one's own time. All along the
shore the granite rocks come down to the
edge of the water, which in many places
lies deep under sheer cliffs. The tide
rises and falls about a dozen feet, and one
may do duller things on a hot morning
than pull slowly, very slowly, along in the
shade at half-tide, watching the starfish
that hold on to the face of the rock with
their red hands, and the brown weed rising
and falling as the water swinges slowly back
and forth. If the tide is not too hicrh one
may explore the moderately thrilling re-
41

^^^ cesses of the caves which abound on some
of the islands, and if the hour is not too
late one may have agreeable converse with
some old gentleman who has been visiting
his lobster pots, and who has probably
sailed every known sea in his time. Of
late years several of our ships of war have
been at Bar Harbor every summer, and
more than once a whole squadron ; and
the yachts of the New York and Eastern
Clubs put in either separately or in little
parties. While they are in port the har-
bor is gay with bunting and laughter and
music, and as one sits on the deck of a
yacht in the evening the lights of the vil-
lage, as they go straggling up the hill and
along the shore, have a very foreign look,
and the cardboard masses of its wooden
hotels loom up as if they were really sub-
stantial habitations.

After being a few days at Bar Harbor
one begins to feel some curiosity about the
phases through which it must have passed.
There are now a number of cottages, most
of them simple, with here and there a few
42

Ca-ve

that are more elaborate, and about a dozen Bar
hotels, three or four of which seem to be
always full and prosperous, while some
others find it at least worth their while to
keep open ; but there are still others
which have frankly given up the game,
and are permanently closed and for sale,
though no one seems anxious to buy
them. Yet they must have been needed
when they were built in the by-gone days,
which were not long ago, and after ex-
hausting a friend or two with questions
one learns that Bar Harbor already has a
past which does not seem likely to repeat
itself.

It was discovered nearly thirty years ago
by a few artists and students roaming, like
Dr. Syntax, in search of the picturesque,
and most of them, if they survive, can be
moved to rage like the heathen, even at
the present day, by reminding them that
they could then have bought land for a
song by the acre where it now sells by the
foot. A few comfort themselves with the
reflection that they were only rich in youth

45

s^'' and strength in those days, and had no
money wherewith to buy land anywhere.
Year by year the fame of Bar Harbor
spread far and wide, and as one hotel be-
came too crowded another sprang up be-
side it, until about twelve years ago the
place was in the full height of popularity.
The few private houses were extremely
simple, and nearly everybody lived either
in the hotels or in little wooden cottages
with no kitchens. The cottagers had to
go to one of the hotels for their food, and
were known as " mealers " if they were
near enough to walk, and " hauled meal-
ers " if they had to be collected with a
cart. The little houses are very uncom-
fortable, and the things to eat at the hotels
very bad. Biscuits and preserves formed
an appreciable part of the visitor's luggage,
and the member of a table who could and
would make good salad-dressing became a
person of importance, for fresh lobsters
and stringy chickens could be bought
cheap, and a judicious regular subsidy to
the hotel cook was an excellent invest-
46

ment. If one was asked to dine at a pri- ^'"'

hi 1 1 lljrho

ouse It was thought better taste iK^t

to boast of it beforehand, nor to talk of it
overmuch afterward, and the host on his
part always expected to provide enough
food to satisfy a crew of famished sailors.
For several seasons men rarely wore even-
ing dress, and such unusual occasions re-
quired previous consultation and discus-
sion, lest one man should seem to be more
formal or ostentatious than the rest. This
was among the quieter " cottage colony,"
but at the large hotels, of which Rodick's
was the most popular, there was little ques-
tion of sumptuary laws, and at the occa-
sional " hops " young fellows in flannels
and knickerbockers were the partners of
pretty girls gay in the fresh finery which a
woman seems able always to carry in the
most restricted luggage.

The principal characteristic of the place
was an air of youth — it did not seem as if
any one could ever be more than twenty-
five years old. Parties of half a dozen
girls were often under the nominal care ot

49

Bar one chaperon, generally chosen because
Harbor ^j^^ ^^^ good naturcd and not too strict,
but as a matter of fact the young people
protected themselves and one another.
Large picnic parties frequently went off
for the day in buckboards, and there is a
lonely sheet of water among the hills,
called Eagle Lake, which used to be a
favorite goal for afternoon expeditions.
There were canoes and row-boats to be
had, and in the evening supper was ob-
tainable, and better than in the Bar Harbor
hotels, at a little tavern where the prohibi-
tion laws of the State were defied. The
usual result followed, and very bad things
to drink were sold at very high prices, after
paying which the party came home, mak-
ing the wood-roads ring with laughter and
singing.

That is all changed now. The tavern
is burnt down, a great wooden box in the
lake marks the sluice which takes the vil-
lage water-supply, people only cross it on
the way to Jordan's Pond, and on moon-
light nights it hears but the occasional

5°

Eagle
Lake

^ %

splash of a fish, or now and then the wild
laughter of the loon. Although parties
were popular enough, the pairs who hap-
pened to have a temporary affinity were
generally in each other's company all day
long, wandering over the hills, rowing or
paddling on the bay, or sitting on the
rocks and islands, each pair out of ear-
shot of the next. On any one of the
" Porcupines" there were always sure to
be two or three row-boats or canoes drawn
up on the little beach; and, as many of
their navigators were not used to so high
a tide-rise, the skiffs frequently floated off,
and it was part of the boatmen's regular
business to pick them up and rescue the
helpless couples to whom they belonged.

In the evenings when there was moon-
light the sight on the bay was really charm-
ing. The meal called tea at the hotels
tempted no one to linger over it, and as
soon as it was over the board-walk was
alive with boys and girls hurrying down
to the landing-stages, the young man in
light flannels, sunburnt and strong, with
53

Bar
Harbo

Bar

Harbor

his companion's bright shawl flung over
one shoulder, while the maiden pattered
along beside him, her white frock drawn
up over a gay striped petticoat, after the
fashion of those days, and often her own
special paddle in her hand, perhaps with
her initials carved carefully thereon and
filled in with sealing-wax, rubbed smooth.
Then there was a scramble at the floats,
and a few minutes later the harbor was
covered with boats and canoes, while those
who were crowded out consoled themselves
by sitting on the rocks along the shore.
Slowly each little craft drew away from its
neighbor on the quiet water, the young
man pulling lazily or wielding the paddle
silently with sweeping strokes of his bare
brown arm — the girl sitting luxuriously in
the stern-sheets, or on a deer-skin in the
bottom of the canoe. The sun went down
toward Hull's Cove ; and as the red glow
faded on the upper bay and the moon
rose behind Schoodie, twilight merging into
moonlight, the rippling note of a girl's
laughter or the twang of a banjo rang

54

softly over the water, a white speck showed Bar
where a boat was beached on the shingle of
an island, while another floated like a black
bar into the silver wake of the moon.

Late in the evening the boats came in,
one bv one, and for those who could
afford it there were little supper-parties at
Sproul's restaurant, while others contented
themselves with mild orgies of biscuits,
jam, and the sticky but sustaining caramel.
The famous " fish-pond " at Rodick's was
a large hall in which the young people
used to assemble after breakfast and the
early dinner, and in which the girls were
supposed to angle for their escorts. It
must have been a curious sight. Some of
the prettiest girls in all the country were
gathered together there, and the soft vowels
of the South mingled with the decided con-
sonants of the Westerner, x-ls a school of
manners the fish-pond had its drawbacks
for young men. They were always rather
in the minority, and a good-looking college
boy was as much run after as a marriage-
able British peer, with no ulterior designs,

55

B^>' however, on the part of his pursuers, but
^^"^ "'' only the frank determination to "have a
good time." People who belonged to the
elders even then, and bore the mark of the
frump, still tell how startling it was to see
a youth sitting on the broad counter of the
office and swinging his legs, with his polo
cap on the back of his head, while two of
the prettiest girls in the world stood and
talked to him, in smiling unconsciousness
of his rudeness.

Of course such conditions were only
possible in a society which still had tradi-
tions of a time not ver^^ remote, when boys
and girls had tramped to and from the vil-
lage meeting-house and singing-school to-
gether, and on the whole it does not seem
that any particular harm came of it ail.
A few imprudent early marriages, a large
number of short-lived betrothals, kisses
many, and here and there a heartache
would sum up the record of a summer at
Bar Harbor in the old days. The young
men got over their heartaches and married
girls whom they would have thought slow
56

LanJt

at Mount Desert; the beautv of the board Bjr
walk married a quiet man who had not
been there, and advised her mother not to
let her younger sister go, and after a while
the newspaper correspondent beo^an to ac-
cumulate the stock of stories about sum-
mer o;irls and eng;aCTement rino;s, on which
he has been drawing ever since.

The quiet people who liked the climate
got tired of living on fried fish and lemon
pie, and built themselves houses in chosen
spots, with kitchens, and each of them is
convinced, and ready to maintain, that he
occupies the most thoroughlv desirable
spot on the island. Fortunatelv, so far as
that is concerned, the wanderer is not
called upon to decide where owners dis-
agree, and with happy impartiality he mav
put away his visit, with all its associations,
in the sate cupboard of his pleasant mem-
ories.

59

14 DAY USE

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LOAN DEPT.

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